Choosing a Geology Field Camp

Before graduating with an undergraduate degree, many geologists attend a field camp to practice real world applications in geology. Field camp is typically a six to 8-week field intensive course where students learn how to read geologic maps, create geologic maps, measure stratigraphic sections, and interpret geologic structures. I personally consider this a 'rite of passage' for geologists, and highly recommend that every geologist takes this course regardless of where your career path leads you. In this post, I want to share my thoughts on how to choose the best field camp for you.

1. Money - Unfortunately, money will likely be a key criterion in choosing a field camp. To attend field camp, you will need to pay tuition for this credit course just like any other course you would take at a university. The cost of the tuition will depend on factors such as if you are in-state or out-of-state, how much travel is involved, and the resources at the field camp. Additional costs to you maybe a flight to the University holding the field camp or hiking and camping gear. Now, luckily, many field camps and other organizations such as the Geological Society of America have scholarships that can help you defer these costs.

2. Location - Field camps are literally located all over the world. I think the first thing you need to decide is if your university has their own field camp, do you want to attend that one. Advantages of going to your own universities field camp are likely in-state tuition costs, familiarity with the professors teaching the course, and also perhaps familiarity with the field camp area.  Disadvantages are you may have already been to this area for other classes, and therefore you might not be challenging yourself to learn something new. If your University does not have a field camp or you chose to attend a different one, then you need to decide if you want to go overseas or stay in the United States, and where exactly do I want to go. This decision might be decided based on your career path. Perhaps you are attending graduate school in the northwest of the US and want to gain familiarity with the area, or maybe you want to see classic outcrops for sequence stratigraphy.

3. Topics Taught - Most field camps always teach the basics of reading and creating geologic maps, creating stratigraphic sections, and identifying geologic structures. However, Universities may vary on how the teach these topics or exactly what topics they teach. Also to take into consideration, and this ties into point number 2, is if the geologic station has a dedicated station or is traveling to different areas. It is important to carefully read the websites of all the field camps and understand what topics they teach.

So now I will talk quickly about the field camp I attended and why I chose this one. I picked the University of Wyoming Field Camp because it traveled to many locations in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. At that point in my life, I have not traveled much, and I was hoping to see as many new things as possible. At each of the new locations, we camped for several days. I really enjoy camping, and so this was an advantage to me instead of staying in a cabin with other people. I also enjoyed that this field camp took us to the Book Cliffs of Utah to learn sequence stratigraphy.  While I attended we also mapped out igneous intrusions as one of our projects and also mapped mass wasting events.

In summary, I think those are the three major things you need to consider in choosing a field camp. Below I will attach a website that provides information on all the geologic field camps that are available. Have fun!

https://education.usgs.gov/nagt/geofieldcamps.html

Geology - It is just rocks, right?

This past spring semester I had the opportunity to teach students geology at a local community college. I absolutely love this job and look forward to continuing teaching for the foreseeable future. On the first day of classes, I like to get to know my students, and I will ask them several questions including "why are you taking this class?" This question is a way for me to gauge who is taking geology because they are interested in the topic and who is taking the class because they need a science credit. More often than not, the students are taking the class because they need to fulfill a science credit. As this past semester progressed, I found out from many students that their academic advisors told them to take geology because "it is just rocks." As you can imagine, this statement does not sit well with me for many reasons. Here are three reasons I dislike the previous statement: 1) geology is much more than rocks, 2) it sounds like the advisor is implying geology is easy, 3) it also sounds like the advisor is discounting the importance of geology.

The first point I made is that geology is much more than rocks. It is very important for a geologist to be able to identify rocks and understand their properties such as the porosity, permeability, or their stability. However, what I mean when I say geology is much more than rocks is that although subdisciplines in geology all have to do with rocks in some capacity, there are bigger picture issues. For example, geologists study groundwater and how to avoid contamination so that we can use this water in our houses for everyday life. Another example is geologists understanding the stability of rocks to avoid mass wasting when building homes, highways, or other structures. To take a quote from an upcoming movie titled Justice League, when someone tells you that geology is just rocks, you should respond, "That feels like an oversimplification."

The second point I mentioned is that it sounds like the advisor is implying geology is an easy subject, and therefore the student should take this class for easy credit. Unfortunately, the student often comes into the class with an attitude thinking they don't need to put in the effort and then starts to struggle with concepts from the beginning. So let us just set this straight right now, geology is not easy. Geology often requires someone to not only understand rocks and minerals, but also to understand chemistry, physics, and biology to name a few other major disciplines.

The final point I made is that the advisor is discounting the importance of geology as a discipline. This point was touched on in the first point I mentioned, but I will just list a couple jobs geologists do that I guess people don't understand geologists have a part it:

1. Find oil and gas
2. Find minerals and other ore bodies for creating things such as your phone or cars.
3. Finding fresh water for you to drink
4. Keep rivers and reservoirs contaminate free so you can continue to drink fresh water.
5. Understand soils to plant crops.
6. Understand climate and how it will affect where we live.
7. Understanding soils/rocks/and slopes to help decide where to build structures.
8. Understand how to minimize beach erosion so you can have beach front properties.
9. Understand earthquakes so you can live in earthquake prone areas.
10. Obviously a lot more.

To conclude my post, I will make sure to explain to future students on the first day of classes that this class will not be easy and quickly explain like I did here, the importance of geology as a discipline. I hope that none of my students will drop the class at this point so that I can expand further throughout the semester the wonders of geology.

Carolina Bays

I learned something new the other day that I was surprised I had never heard about. I was especially surprised because I grew up on the east coast of the United States where these structures are found. The structures I am talking about are called Carolina Bays. I feel this is a great point to mention that learning never stops, and it is actually fun for me to learn about something new.

The Carolina Bays are shallow elliptical depressions with raised rims (Fig. 1). Some of the depressions are filled with water, but most are wetlands that are rich in biodiversity (Wikipedia).

Figure 1: Carolina Bays located in North Carolina. 

According to Wikipedia, there are about 500,000 of these structures found along the east coast and they range in size from 1 to several thousand acres. All of the structures are located in a general northwest to southeast orientation, but the long axes systematically rotate more westward moving North. The age of the structures are still debated, but based on several lines of evidence are considered to predate the start of the Holocene period no more than a hundred thousand years.

There are two proposed origins of the Carolina Bays. The first origin is considered to be geomorphologically created due to various processes. One major hypothesis is that these structures were formed from the dissolution of subsurface material and then later modified by a combination of eolian and lacustrine processes. The second origin is considered to be of an extraterrestrial impact. This hypothesis was widely accepted in the 1950's, however, after more research, this hypothesis did not hold up well because of the lack of impact evidence (e.g., too shallow and no meteorite fragments).

I have to admit that I am having trouble following the resurrection of the impact theory. I will try to explain it as best as possible below.

The impact hypothesis had been resurrected in 2009 after the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis by Richard Firestone in 2007 which he claimed was caused by an extraterrestrial comet airburst. According to Richard Firestone, the Carolina Bays were created from the shockwave of the impact. This hypothesis has been rejected by the scientific community because Richard Firestone evidence for an impact does not hold up. There is also the question of not finding a crater as well as Carolina Bays being of different age and therefore not created from a single event.

The latest hypothesis is that the Carolina Bays were made by impacts of ice that were secondary projectiles by an extraterrestrial impact on a glacier. However, I am not sure how this hypothesis answers the questions of no impact crater and the different ages of the Carolina Bays from before.


Here are some websites. The information I have written about were paraphrashed from these websites:
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-science-space/carolina-bays-and-destruction-north-america-004458

http://www.scientificpsychic.com/etc/carolina-bays/origin-of-carolina-bays.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_bay

New Years Resolution for a Geologist

1. I will finally publish my research in a peer-reviewed journal.

2. I will not collect or buy all rock/mineral/fossil samples I find.

3. I will visit that national park I have always talked about going to.

4. I will stop staring at the ground looking for rocks on hikes and enjoy the rest nature has to offer.